Word: marxist
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Amalrik has been in trouble with Soviet authorities ever since he was a student at Moscow University, when he was expelled for an "un-Marxist" study stressing foreign influences in early Russian history, and for taking the manuscript to the Danish embassy for forwarding to Danish scholars...
Last year ITT's power and presumptuousness came to light with disclosures that it stood ready to underwrite with cash any efforts the CIA might be considering to prevent the election of Salvador Allende, Chile's Marxist President. At home-if such a cozy term can be used for a multinational-ITT provided an early trickle to the Watergate. ITT Lobbyist Dita Beard's secret memo found its way into Jack Anderson's column, where it told of a $400,000 pledge for the 1972 Republican Convention. All this occurred shortly before the Justice Department settled...
...first section of the book, a set of biblical tales retold, Kolakowski puts the original ambiguities into the Marxist-Leninist idiom. While this sounds reductionist, the effect is quite the reverse. Kolakowski is so faithful to and concerned with the problematic paradox of Hebraic legend that he exaggerates the difficulties to the point where, for sheer ambivalence, his tales rival even the parables of Kafka. Translated into the lingo of current ideological strife, the Old Testament acquires an applicability most have long given up suspecting. To take his own best illustration, Kolakowski turns the story of Jacob and Esau into...
...another given by a student of sexual exorcism, Kolakowski indicts Christianity for its contempt of the body, and by implication, of this world. While this second section is not so successful nor so concise as the first, it is more ambitious. Kolakowski is trying to be a Marxist Kierkegaard, even to the extent of simulating the same use of irony by impersonation of a point of view he means to discredit. But Kolakowski is not ventriloquist enough. The false perspective does not convince, and so the correct one stands out too visibly between the lines. Consequently the book stumbles onto...
Nonetheless, from this brief but far-reaching display of capsulated argument, Kolakowski gives every appearance of deserving his growing reputation. As if the effort to relativize Moscow's dictates to the Communist conscience weren't enough, a Marxist with a sense of humor ought to be heard. Kolakowski is more serious, and for that reason, funnier than the ideological comedians this country has to offer...